Don’t call him ‘Slim,’ but trimmed Silva looking good

Silva, or what’s left of him, made an appearance in the Mariner spring training clubhouse in Peoria Friday, and he looks like a new man.

In part, that’s because the old Silva, circa 2008, looked closer to two men. After tipping the scales at between 250 and 260 pounds during his four years with Minnesota, the 6-foot-4 Silva ballooned to at least 275. That resulted in back pain and in large part was responsible for Silva’s worst season, 4-15 with a 6.46 ERA.

Not exactly what the Mariners were looking for when they signed him to a four-year, $48 million contract.

But the man his teammates called ”El Buffalo” is a lot closer this year to ”El Buff.”

He’s dropped about 30 pounds, and while he’s never going to be svelte, he looks like an athlete again.

”I just followed the program they gave me,” Silva said, his wide smile a stark contrast to the grim visage of Silva in July, August and September. ”I started about the second week of October, and didn’t stop. I worked out six days a week.”

That’s six days of yoga in the morning, working out with a personal trainer in the afternoon and going to the gym at night.

Asked if it had been difficult, Silva said, ”Oh, my God.”

Along the way, he went to a nutritionist who helped him to completely change his eating habits.

”There was a lot of green stuff on my plate,” he said.

With all that, he said it was easy to put the horror of 2008 behind him.

”I was able to not think about that and think about getting back into shape,” he said. ”I never had back pain before this, and my back feels great now.”

Not everything was easy, however. He was shown some basic yoga and thought, ”no problem.”

”Then in the first hour, after 10 minutes, it was killing me,” he said. ”Yoga was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But I’m going to keep doing it. It’s really helped.”

The next ordeal for Silva is proving he the right man for the Seattle rotation. Even for the most highly paid pitcher on the team, there is no guarantee he’ll be one of the club’s five starting pitchers.